This was originally posted to TheJeffFiles.com on August 25, 2008. This is now my primary blog, so I want to ensure that my earlier articles are preserved.
Dear CDS,
Four months seem to disappear in a single, breathtaking instant when spent working at one of the world’s most renowned companies. Many hear of perks, of the free food and the massages, and many may even receive an opportunity to enjoy them, but few genuinely receive the opportunity to be immersed in the culture not only within Google, but surrounding it.
Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re a sociable person, then I want you to seriously consider contributing to, and reading, the Waterloo Social Calendar on Google Calendar. It’s a public calendar with contributors added on an invite-only basis so as to keep it spam-free. If your syndicator strips the embedded iframe out, then you can bookmark the calendar itself here.
If you’d like to contribute events, please shoot me an email at jverkoey@gmail.com and I’ll add you to the contributors list. Please share this page with your friends.
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s about time that I start letting people know why I love Google Docs so much.
My latest escapade with Google Docs has been in budgeting the last eight months of my university education. Up until this point in my academic career I’ve been relatively carefree with my expenditures, resting assured in the fact that within four months’ time I’d be working again. Things change pretty quickly though when you’re suddenly thrust into a position where what was once a four-month budget needs to be stretched to an eight-month one.
During the summer of 2009 I made a big decision. It was early in the academic term and I had just received my first midterm mark.
It was 30%.
Never in the history of my academic career had I received a midterm mark below 50%, but this 30% wasn’t a shock to me. I had been spending nearly all of my time outside of the classroom working on what would soon be one of my largest projects to date, the Strips platform.
When I saw the failed mark on my midterm I took some time to think, as anyone should do when this sort of thing happens. I came to the conclusion that I had reached a point in my academic career where I strongly believed that I had the chops to build something, and that I needed to do it right then.
So I took the plunge. I dropped three of my four courses and spent the next three months working full time on the Strips platform.
This is its post-mortem, and I hope to leave this as a note to myself and anyone else who has the desire to build something.
My last week in San Francisco. It still hasn’t sunk in.
I’m sitting on my favorite rooftop in the world. I mean that both literally and figuratively. Not more than 24 hours before this night I was sitting here with a good friend while we ate Little Star pizza and drank five dollar champ. We spent a good portion of the night discussing life after university and came to interesting conclusions about the state of our world. Nights like that don’t happen nearly enough.
But I dwell.
Actually, I plan on dwelling for a good portion of this post, so deal.
Living in San Francisco has been one of the most memorable times in my life. Throughout my life I’ve never felt so connected to a city as much as I have to San Francisco. From the moment I stumbled into Patrick and Jason on Castro St last summer to this, I’ve acquired some of my most precious memories. I’ve never so consistently thought to myself “these are memories that I’ll keep for the rest of my life”. Surfing in Venice Beach, jumping out of airplanes, climbing to the tops of cruise ships, driving jet skis at breakneck speeds, and discovering one of the most breathtaking views of the city are just a few. Each has its own story, and I’m happy to have experienced each and every one of them. Beyond the work and the nice weather, what living in San Francisco comes down to is the people, and believe me when I say that I’ll cherish the memories I’ve been privileged with.
I’m a victim of trends and it seems that some of my friends have been keeping rather good logs of their day-to-day activities. It’s about time I start contributing to this “internet” contraption all proper-like.
I’ll quickly explain where the hell the name of this blog came from. I took part in a musical titled Leader of the Pack during my 12th year of education. Thanks to Google’s book scraping, I can actually point you to the exact line I elocuted while crossing right, downstage of Jeff. I had one line and I got to wear cool shades. It was good times.
I think I may write my blog posts like my git commits. Mostly atomic, but oftentimes a ménage à trois of sorts. Sometimes I might cherry-pick posts from other blogs of mine, and sometimes I might, gods forbid, rewrite history. I’ll try to keep that last one down to a minimum.